Road Warrior: A safer Skyline Drive?

The Record

You don’t have to be from Ringwood or Oakland to appreciate the horrors of Skyline Drive. Simply driving this hilly, twisting, crash-prone thoroughfare can put you in a foul mood.

Bernard Lombardo calls it Kill Hill on Steroids, but he has good reasons. Officially, he’s the Ringwood police chief. Historically, he recalls the day a week before Christmas 2000 when a runaway truck lost its brakes there and killed a retired couple and a pharmacist. And metaphorically, he’s one of several people who have been trying ever since to flatten this deadly hill.

“We haven’t had any fatalities there lately,” the chief said. “But Skyline accounts for at least 10 percent of our traffic accidents, particularly when it rains.”

Improving safety on a major two-lane road that twists and turns up and down Ramapo Mountain can be as unreliable as forecasting rainy weather.

After the fatal crash, outraged residents demanded a ban on trucks, and they got it – almost. The state Department of Transportation agreed to bar only trucks over 10 tons – unless they were making local deliveries. But at the insistence of NJ Transit, 17-ton commuter buses were exempted from the ban. To Ringwood’s horror, a judge favored these approaches.

So, police beefed up traffic patrols, and local businesses agreed to keep their trucks off the fickle, serpentine road that seems to change its name as frequently as its direction — Skyline Drive or Route 692 in Passaic County, West Oakland Avenue or Route S91 when it crosses the Bergen County line into Oakland, and “Kill Hill” in both counties.

The good news is that fatal truck accidents have declined to zero since Wilmont and Dorothy Hafner and Vincent Dominianni were killed there on Dec. 19, 2000.

But there have been a few other fatalities and scores of accidents and injuries. Cars still exceed the 35-mph speed limit while descending the steep hill, too.

In nine years, other safety ideas have come and gone. Agreement was never reached on installing a traffic light ($250,000) or building a roundabout with yield signs at either end at Erskine Road ($500,000). Instead, the county installed a stop sign with blinking lights, and it’s reconsidering the old traffic light plan.

“I hear about near-misses at that intersection every month,” said Mayor Walter Davison.

So, since Aug. 5, motorists have been greeted by a bumpier ride on Skyline. Under a $15,000 contract, Passaic County milled – or ground down and grooved – a quarter-inch of the pavement of the steepest half-mile section of the road where the runaway truck began its descent.

The result: no more crashes in wet weather. “Tires grip the road better,” County Traffic Engineer Chuck Silverstein explained.

By tires, Silverstein means truck and car tires. Motorcyclists with much narrower wheels, such as Alan Tlusty of West Milford, consider it “really dangerous” because Skyline’s downhill turns and new groove patterns can cause bikers to lose control of their bikes. Only two small signs warn motorists about the rough pavement, Tlusty added.

Drivers don’t like it much either. “When snow and ice fill the milled grooves, the road could turn into ice,” said Ringwood’s Albert Kuchler Jr.

Milling isn’t a cure-all. It’s usually an initial stage in repaving. But in this case, the county has no intention of pouring smooth pavement over the milled asphalt because cars are more likely to skid on a smooth road in the rain. When Skyline gets icy, it’s always closed — whether the pavement beneath the ice is smooth or rough, said Lombardo.

It’s a fair question, especially if you drive a motorcycle. In the last six years, the motorcycle death rate has climbed nearly 50 percent — from an average 65 annually from 2003 to 2005 to 97 each year from 2006 to 2008. Three years from now, it would be a shame to learn that Passaic County had traded 18-wheeler crashes for two-wheeler crashes.

Road Warrior: A safer Skyline Drive?

The Record

You don’t have to be from Ringwood or Oakland to appreciate the horrors of Skyline Drive. Simply driving this hilly, twisting, crash-prone thoroughfare can put you in a foul mood.

Bernard Lombardo calls it Kill Hill on Steroids, but he has good reasons. Officially, he’s the Ringwood police chief. Historically, he recalls the day a week before Christmas 2000 when a runaway truck lost its brakes there and killed a retired couple and a pharmacist. And metaphorically, he’s one of several people who have been trying ever since to flatten this deadly hill.

“We haven’t had any fatalities there lately,” the chief said. “But Skyline accounts for at least 10 percent of our traffic accidents, particularly when it rains.”

Improving safety on a major two-lane road that twists and turns up and down Ramapo Mountain can be as unreliable as forecasting rainy weather.

After the fatal crash, outraged residents demanded a ban on trucks, and they got it – almost. The state Department of Transportation agreed to bar only trucks over 10 tons – unless they were making local deliveries. But at the insistence of NJ Transit, 17-ton commuter buses were exempted from the ban. To Ringwood’s horror, a judge favored these approaches.

So, police beefed up traffic patrols, and local businesses agreed to keep their trucks off the fickle, serpentine road that seems to change its name as frequently as its direction — Skyline Drive or Route 692 in Passaic County, West Oakland Avenue or Route S91 when it crosses the Bergen County line into Oakland, and “Kill Hill” in both counties.

The good news is that fatal truck accidents have declined to zero since Wilmont and Dorothy Hafner and Vincent Dominianni were killed there on Dec. 19, 2000.

But there have been a few other fatalities and scores of accidents and injuries. Cars still exceed the 35-mph speed limit while descending the steep hill, too.

In nine years, other safety ideas have come and gone. Agreement was never reached on installing a traffic light ($250,000) or building a roundabout with yield signs at either end at Erskine Road ($500,000). Instead, the county installed a stop sign with blinking lights, and it’s reconsidering the old traffic light plan.

“I hear about near-misses at that intersection every month,” said Mayor Walter Davison.

So, since Aug. 5, motorists have been greeted by a bumpier ride on Skyline. Under a $15,000 contract, Passaic County milled – or ground down and grooved – a quarter-inch of the pavement of the steepest half-mile section of the road where the runaway truck began its descent.

The result: no more crashes in wet weather. “Tires grip the road better,” County Traffic Engineer Chuck Silverstein explained.

By tires, Silverstein means truck and car tires. Motorcyclists with much narrower wheels, such as Alan Tlusty of West Milford, consider it “really dangerous” because Skyline’s downhill turns and new groove patterns can cause bikers to lose control of their bikes. Only two small signs warn motorists about the rough pavement, Tlusty added.

Drivers don’t like it much either. “When snow and ice fill the milled grooves, the road could turn into ice,” said Ringwood’s Albert Kuchler Jr.

Milling isn’t a cure-all. It’s usually an initial stage in repaving. But in this case, the county has no intention of pouring smooth pavement over the milled asphalt because cars are more likely to skid on a smooth road in the rain. When Skyline gets icy, it’s always closed — whether the pavement beneath the ice is smooth or rough, said Lombardo.

It’s a fair question, especially if you drive a motorcycle. In the last six years, the motorcycle death rate has climbed nearly 50 percent — from an average 65 annually from 2003 to 2005 to 97 each year from 2006 to 2008. Three years from now, it would be a shame to learn that Passaic County had traded 18-wheeler crashes for two-wheeler crashes.